Freezer-Friendly Fresh Yeast Rolls
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Yeast breads are intimidating to many people. Having tried a time or two and failed or perhaps just hearing too many horror stories about how difficult yeast is to master, I know a lot of folks who won’t even attempt to make homemade breads or rolls this way.
But y’all know if I’m going to bring you a recipe, its really going to be easy and doable by everyone. Today’s recipe is no different.
These rolls are absolutely delicious but my favorite part is the seeds. I LOVE wheaty bread with seeds inside, it’s my favorite. For this recipe, you can use what seeds you prefer or the combination I used. Everything is nicer when you customize it to your own tastes.
Once you are done with the dough, pull off bits the size of rolls and place them on greased cookie sheets. Cover well and freeze, then remove and toss in zipper seal bags and return immediately to the freezer. When you need rolls, take them out and place them on a greased cookie sheet or in greased muffin cups and allow to rise in a warm place (covered with a towel) until doubled in size. Bake as usual and you have warm, seedy and delicious dinner rolls with no fuss!
This recipe makes about 75 rolls. With the convenience of only baking what you need, they can last for quite some time! 
You’ll need: oil, bread flour, whole wheat flour, quick cooking oats, salt, yeast, brown sugar, a bit of white sugar, flax seed, and sunflower seed (or your seed preference).
Most of you are going to use yeast bought in packets. If that is the case, you’ll need three packs of yeast. I prefer to buy mine in a jar because I go through a good bit of it and its just nicer to be able to measure it out and pop the jar back in my fridge. Yeast in a jar will last for ages if kept in the fridge, well past the expiration date.
If you do buy yeast in a jar, it tells on the side how many teaspoons are equivalent to a package :).
In a mixing bowl place bread flour, tablespoon of white sugar, and yeast. Add warm water.
Here is where a lot of people run into problems. If you’ve had difficulty with yeast breads in the past it was most likely due to one of two things:
- Water Temperature
- Inactive (Bad) Yeast
The water temperature is tricky because it must be warm to help activate the yeast but if it is too hot, you’ll kill your yeast. This problem is simply solved if you’ve ever given a baby a bath. The perfect temperature for your yeast is the temperature of baby bath water. If it would burn a baby, it’s too hot. If it would chill a baby, its too cold.
If you are more comfortable being really technical about things until you get your yeast baking confidence about you, the water temp needs to be around 110F, you can use a candy thermometer for this.
Stir all of that up just a bit. It will be lumpy and thats alright. See those bubbles? That means our yeast is already active and growing!
This step is called “proofing” and that basically means that before we attempt to make bread out of this, we want to make sure our yeast is still viable.
So what we’re going to do is let this sit for about five minutes to make sure, although I can already tell we have some good yeast here.
Lets see what it looks like after five minutes…
Wow, see that? Happy yeast!
If, after five minutes, your batter isn’t bubbly and expanded like this, don’t go any further. You need fresh yeast.
Just go grab a few more packets at the grocery store.
Now lets add our bread ingredients and get us some dough a goin’!
Add in oats…
Whole wheat flour and more white sugar (mine is hiding under the wheat flour)
Brown Sugar
(I am using light, you can use light or dark)
A wee bit more white sugar, salt, and more warm water (baby bath water!).
Then we add about 1/2 cup of each kind of seed we want to use. These are sunflower.
I actually had salted sunflower kernels in my pantry and although you should use unsalted for baking, I used these and they worked out just fine.
You know we don’t get too particular around these parts.
Flax seed : yum yum! Good source of iron, too.
Mix all of that up. I am using my stand mixer and the dough hook but if you have to, you can do this by hand.
Just get ready to use some muscle in our next step! 
Now we start gradually adding our bread flour. Start by adding about two cups and blending that in. Then add another two cups and repeat.
You’re going to end up adding a grand total of about ten cups of bread flour but you may need a little less depending on the stickiness of your dough. I only used about nine cups of flour. You want to keep blending (or stirring – WOW you must be strong!) in between additions so you can see when your dough starts to pull away from the sides and stick together in one massive glob. Glob is good. Thats when we know we’re done.
See how globby mine is? I just have to blend it a bit more until all of that flour is incorporated and then I’m good to go. Now comes the messy part!
Get the biggest bowl you can find. It is most likely not going to be big enough but get it anyway. Pour a little oil into it, about 1/4 of an inch. Just plain vegetable oil is fine.
If you wanna get fancy you can use that ten dollar bottle of olive oil you got going rancid in the back of your pantry because it seemed like a good thing to do to buy it at the time…
Me, I’m just sticking with my $1.98 a bottle cooking oil. I’ll eat all that fancy olive oil food though, long as you cook it for me. ~batts her lashes~
Convince your dough glob to hop into the greased bowl.
If you can’t convince it to hop you’ll have to tug, pull, drag, and otherwise coerse it in there.
This is sticky, thats okay. Its a great excuse to lick your fingers when you are done. I love this bread unbaked almost as much as I do baked!
Once you have your dough in the greased bowl, flip it over a time or two so its all nice and coated with oil.
Cover it with a dish towel and let it sit in a nice warm place for about an hour, or until doubled …
I feel it only fair that I should warn you though, this dough is an over achiever 🙂
This is my dough after only thirty minutes.
Whoa thar, Nelly!
Better get us some rolls made!
Take a baking sheet or large baking pan or just whatever you have handy and line it with parchment paper or waxed paper.
Spray that really well with cooking spray.
Pull off globs of dough, about an inch and a half in diameter, and place them on your lined sheet.
When you fill up a sheet, wrap it really well in cling wrap or foil that has been sprayed with cooking spray and place immediately in the freezer for several hours.
Once frozen, peel off baking sheets and place in zipper seal bag and return to the freezer.
While you are doing this your dough is going ot deflate a little, don’t worry, its fine!
When ready to bake, take frozen balls of dough and place each one in a well greased muffin cup. Use that old grungy looking muffin pan you have coz it bakes good rolls.
Set in warm place and cover with a dish towel. Allow to thaw and rise until doubled, this will take up to four hours so you want to get them out at lunchtime in order to have rolls for supper. Once risen, remove towel and bake at 350 for 15-20 minutes, or until browned.
I have absolutely no self control around these things.
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup warm water
- 3 packages dry yeast
- 1 tablespoon white sugar
- 2 cups quick cooking oats
- ½ cup flax seed
- ½ cup sunflower kernels
- 2 cups whole wheat flour
- 4 1/2 cups warm water
- 1 1/2 tablespoons salt
- 2/3 cup brown sugar
- 2/3 cup vegetable oil
- 8-10 ¼ cups bread flour 1/4 for proofing and the rest for dough. Will most likely just need eight
Instructions
- In a mixing bowl place ½ cup warm water, tablespoon of sugar, ¼ cup of bread flour, and yeast. Stir together gently. Allow to proof for five minutes. In five minutes, it should be bubbly and noticeably larger in size.
- Add all other ingredients except bread flour. Beat for about a minute with electric mixer, until well combined. Slowly add bread flour two cups at a time, mixing well with a dough hook after each addition (can use regular paddle if you don’t have a dough hook). Add enough flour so that the dough forms a ball and pulls away from the sides. This will usually be anywhere from 8-10 cups. Dough will be sticky.
- Place dough in LARGE oiled bowl and turn to coat. Cover with dish towel and let sit in a warm spot for 45 minutes to an hour, until doubled in size. Pull off 1 ½ inch balls of dough and place on baking sheets lined with waxed paper or parchment paper which has been sprayed with cooking spray.
- Cover and seal well and freeze until firm. Remove from sheets and place in zipper seal bags, returning to freezer immediately.
- To bake, remove desired amount of dough balls from freezer. Place each dough ball in a greased muffin cup. Cover with dish towel and allow to rise in warm place until doubled in size. Bake at 350 for 15-20 minutes, or until browned and done.
- To bake rolls from unfrozen dough (the day you make the dough), place dough balls in greased muffin cups. Cover and allow to rise for about an hour or until doubled. Bake as instructed above.
Nutrition
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I’ve adopted a blogger!If you haven’t visited Maralee before, today is a great day to do so! She is the sweetest thing since peaches and cream and her etiquette advice is such a breath of fresh air in today’s world.Here is a post of hers that I just love “How To Be A Cool Breeze In Other’s Days”. This post truly touched my heart and I know it will touch yours as well.If can, take the time to read it, blot your eyes, post a comment for Maralee (she loves them as much as I do!) and go make the world a better place! I promise this post will help you do that!
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My kids are not happy with Southern Plate today! I’ve been working on this post since I first got up (just getting it up onthe website – I baked the rolls yesterday) and they have been waiting all this time for us to go to the park.
So I’m gonna hit “send” and head out and spend some time with them. I hope your summer is off to a great start and thank you for sharing a little of it with me!
Gratefully,
Christy
Way to go Christy, I think I can do this! And I absolutely LOVE Maralee’s Blog! She is such a kind beautiful heart warming person,
These look great! Could I substitute white flour for the whole wheat? My husband thinks he doesn’t like anything whole wheat. lol 🙂
With larger containers of yeast – you can keep it in your freezer and it stays fresh almost indefinitely! I buy lots of yeast at a time, because it’s more cost effective than the little packets. Stored in the freezer it’ll last and last.
I’ve never made bread or rolls with seeds in them, but it looks delicious! I love the idea of keeping frozen rolls in the freezer, to take out and bake whenever you want. That’s such an awesome idea. 🙂
I have never been brave enough to try anything with yeast. Every once in a while, my husband will throw together some yeast dough and make the most awesome deep dish pizza in our old iron skillet. So I might give this a try … I’ve used enough of your recipes to believe you when you say it’s easy. And I’m a big fan of wheat breads so that’s a bonus too.
I’ve always wondered how warm is “warm” as far as where to put dough to rise. Do you put it in a special place?
That is a great question!!!
Warm in my book is not as important as “not cold”. Your dough will rise a little faster in a warm place but it still rises just fine at room temp. The main thing you don’t want to do is noticeably slow the rising of your dough by putting it in a cold place.
In the summer, finding a warm spot is easy. I usually put my dough on the kitchen table in this spot where the sunshine hits. One of my neighbors used to let hers rise on the back patio on a table she had there. I have also found that in the summertime, sitting it on top of my freezer in the garage is an excellent place.
In the winter, things can get a little tougher.
If you have a laundry room and the dryer has been running, setting it in that room would work. Another thing you can do is preheat your oven for just a few minutes, then turn it off and open the door slightly. See if you can put your hand fully inside and it not hurt but just be warm. If that is the case, I put a cookie sheet in first and set my rolls on top of it. The reason I put it on a cookie sheet is that the rack heats up pretty quickly and retains the heat longer and I don’t want the bottom of my pan having direct contact with that, the result being that my rolls would begin cooking a bit before they have actually risen like I want them to.
Whew, that was a lot of rambling but there isn’t one particular answer I could give you so I gave you all of them!
But the main thing is, “warm” is not nearly as important as “not cold”. 🙂
Hope this helps!
Christy
P.S. I hope this doesn’t confuse you greatly but sometimes I want rolls in the morning and I put them in the muffin pan frozen and stick them in the fridge overnight. They thaw and rise just a little and then in the morning I put them on the counter and they are ready to bake in about half an hour. See they will rise in the cold, just very very slowly. 🙂
Thanks! That does clarify for me! I’m excited to try these!
I turn turn my oven on..to like 175 or so…and turn it off two minutes later. Then I stick in my bowl…not too hot for the bowl and perfect for the dough.
Just joined the group, but wanted to say I set my bowl of dough on top of my aquarium, HAHA it works great for the “right Temp”
Hello, Christy!
I’ve been reading Southern Plate for about a month, and this is now one of my favorite sites. I check daily, and have been known to spend hours (yes!) reading the previous posts.
I’ve made a variation of these rolls for a number of years, and they are wonderful. Your tutorials are excellent. I used to cook professionally, and my Mother was a Home Economics teacher for over 30 years.
One thing I love is that you include information other food bloggers neglect, or frankly, do not know, like pan sizes, temperatures, and variations.
I have an older microwave with a temperature probe, and I just pour the water or milk or buttermilk into a Pyrex measure, and heat it to temperature with the probe.
Also, instead of flopping the dough around in the rising bowl, I spray the bowl with no stick spray, and then spray the top of the dough with either the butter flavor spray or the olive oil spray.
I keep my yeast in the freezer. Does not need to be defrosted..and works really well.
I hope you and the children had a good time at the park!
Lawrence
Lawrence,
While I was out with the kids today, I checked my email on the phone (they were occupied) and saw your wonderful comment.
I cannot tell you how very much it meant to me and I am so very grateful that you happened upon Southern Plate and I somehow got lucky enough to snag you as a reader!
Thank you so very much for reading and for taking such time to write a comment that just about made my heart burst with joy. You’ve humbled and thrilled me with your gracious words.
Thank you!
Gratefully,
Christy
Aw, shucks, Ma’am. Just the truth!
I may live in the North (a small university town in NE Ohio,) but a friend who was born in Memphis and now lives in South Carolina has long said that she thinks I am “really” a Southerner.
I do like this site, and how it is more of a community than many other cooking blogs.
After a long time of not cooking much, especially for myself, I have slowly started to cook again, and many of the dishes here at Southern Plate just say “remember how good I am?”
Even though potluck season is winding down at my church, there are always picnics…..and what’s good for a church potluck is usually just as good for a picnic.
Thank you for your welcome!
Lawrence
Oh my GOODNESS gracious….. I’m gonna have to MAKE these. Now I know just what to do with that dang flaxseed making me feel guilty!!
DEBBIE!!! Look how gorgeous you are!!!! I have not forgotten you, honest!!
And just out of curiosity, what are you doing with flax seed?
lol
I just buy mine for the rolls. Never heard of folks just having it sitting around collectin’ dust. ~winks~
Soap?
Gratefully,
Christy